President Donald Trump again blasted the attention given to the Jeffrey Epstein case on Wednesday, calling it a “Democrat hoax” after victims of the convicted sex offender gathered on Capitol Hill to demand more transparency.
While speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump was asked about the large group of Epstein victims who gathered nearby, just outside the Capitol Building. The president doubled down on referring to the Epstein controversy as a “hoax,” saying that it “never ends.”
“From what I understand, thousands of pages of documents have been given out, but it’s really a Democrat hoax because they’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president,” Trump said.
The president then pointed to his action in Washington, D.C., where he deployed the National Guard and ordered federal agents to crack down on violent crime in the city.
“So what they’re trying to do with the Epstein hoax is get people to talk about that instead of speaking about the tremendous success like ending seven wars. I ended seven wars,” he added. “Nobody is going to talk about that because they’re going to talk about the Epstein whatever.”
Following the rally, numerous Epstein victims met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill to call on the federal government to release more information on the investigation. One Epstein accuser said it was “devastating” to hear the president marginalize the ongoing controversy, and another called on the president to meet with her “because this is not a hoax.”
The Department of Justice said in July that it found no evidence of an Epstein client list, but Epstein victims said at the rally that they would compile their own, revealing the names of Epstein associates who abused them.
“We know the names. Many of us were abused by them. Now together as survivors, we will confidentially compile the names we all know were regularly in the Epstein world, and it will be done by survivors and for survivors,” said Lisa Phillips.
Another Epstein victim spoke out publicly for the first time on Wednesday, revealing that she was “Minor Victim 1” in Epstein’s 2019 indictment. Marina Lacerda said that she was forced into Epstein’s New York mansion, along with dozens of other girls, when they were “just kids.”
Lacerda said she was offered money to give a massage to an older man, adding that she dropped out of high school to work for Epstein. She called on the government to release the Epstein files “not only for transparency, but for the American people.”
The Republican-led House Oversight Committee released more than 33,000 pages of Epstein documents, but critics blasted the heavily redacted document trove.